


broke your throne, cut your hair

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bottom Victor, Explicit Sexual Content, Lingerie, M/M, Post-Canon, Sensation Play, Subdrop, Switching, dominant/submissive overtones, mild bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 01:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16714216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: Post-canon; three times Victor and Yuuri have sex and two when they don't.Be yourself,Yuuri always insists, and in every time and every place he finds a way to give Victor back all the little pieces he lost along the way.





	broke your throne, cut your hair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ken_ichijouji (dommific)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/gifts).



> it is slightly hilarious to me that i wrote 50% of this high on post-op drugs and the other 50% as an incentive for a fundraiser but whatever dommi's had A Time lately and what does she get for her troubles? answer: dicks. lots of dicks. 
> 
> mind the tags, fam.

It starts after the Grand Prix Final, innocuously enough, as they lie together spooning in the dark. For once, the rabid, unfurling love that’s taken control of Victor does not need to conquer territory; there are no desperate kisses here, no feeling like any moment his hands will turn into claws, no need for one of them or the other to bury something about themselves into their lover’s body. Instead, there’s just a deep intimacy between them both, every nook and cranny of their bodies fit together. Victor keeps their hands twined into a knot against the deceptively soft plane of Yuuri’s stomach, keeping both of them anchored there on the bed so that neither one of them can leave without undoing the tangle of fingers and limbs. Maybe it’s his way of protecting them both from the fragile, sharp parts of themselves -- Yuuri’s fears and Victor’s fictions -- which nearly lost this precious thing that exists between them, and won it all back in a single revelation on the ice, the place where they still know to communicate best.

The conversation, barely more than an exchange of whispers, goes like this:   _If this is going to work we have to be honest with each other,_ Victor murmurs; and Yuuri hums something like agreement and then says _okay. Ask me anything._ So Victor thinks, and then he smiles into Yuuri’s neck, picks something he thinks will be safe and harmless and fun as his opening salve. “What else can you do besides pole dancing?”

He ought to have known better; Yuuri _always_ surprises. “Well …”

\- - -

_It started out as a thing I did to manage my own anxiety. A place where I could be in control._

“Vitya.” There’s no variation of that name Victor doesn’t love on Yuuri’s lips, and he shivers with it now, laden as it is with layers of care and concern and an unmistakable undertone of authority which demands that Victor blink himself back into the present. The season is over; they’re spending a weekend together in St. Petersburg before flying to Hasetsu, a thinly-veiled excuse to be alone with each other without the bustle of Yu-Topia around them. 

Truthfully, Victor’s been looking forward to going back: he fell in love in Sochi, but Hasetsu is the place where he learned to stick the landing. It will always be special to him to wander back through all the places where he began to learn to understand Katsuki Yuuri a little better. It’s just that here in St. Petersburg, they have hardly any obligations, and certainly no interruptions. When Yuuri woke up in his arms in the silvery light of morning, he seemed determined to make the best of it, which is to say he ate Victor out until tears brimmed on the edges of his eyes, and then he’d hesitated for a moment before going to find one of Victor’s nicer ties. _What’s your safeword, Vitya?_

His safe word is _Yubileyny,_ jubilee, the place Victor came to as a child and then conquered in a way no one will soon forget. To merely summon the memory of it is to reclaim the high ground, to put himself back into that cold, sacred temple where Victor Nikiforov is a god. Except he’s no living legend here, now; he’s malleable and mortal in Yuuri’s hands, with a dull ache in his shoulders and subtle stiffness in his wrists. Yuuri, his dirty, devious, wonderful Yuuri, has Victor well past over-stimulated, circling Victor’s abused hole with one finger to rub a mix of lube, spit, and come back in.  “Vitya,” he says, again. “Look at me.”

Victor does, but it’s a mistake to look so directly at such languid heat. “Yes?” He croaks. Shudders. Moans. Yuuri’s other hand drifts through Victor’s sweaty bangs, and he leans forward to nibble on Victor’s jaw. Victor’s fingers twitch behind his back, desperate to reciprocate, but so far Yuuri has yet to undo the knot holding his wrists together. It’s incredible, the power such a simple thing has to ruin him. Victor likes to think of himself as a generous lover, eager to please, ready to perform, but the simple act of tying up his hands takes away his power to offer anything other than the channel of his own body. There is a vicious dichotomy in it, which Victor’s thoughts keep tripping towards in blind, stupid bliss: like this he ought to be little more than a tool for Yuuri’s pleasure, but quite the opposite, he’s the one who’s been subsumed by the full intensity of Yuuri’s focus.

 _It’s just a scrap of silk,_ he tries to remind himself, sucking in a deep breath. Yet the tie has made the world smaller, somehow, as though it only exists in the places where Yuuri touches him. “I think you can go one more time, don’t you?” Yuuri asks, almost conversational, and _oh,_ his fingers are wet again, and when he slips them inside Victor once more, Victor can’t help but hiss out an exhale of discomfort, kept at the borderlands of ecstasy and anguish.

Yuuri holds him there, intent on an answer. There are rules for this, Victor remembers. Warning lights. He’s heard it all before, listening to Yuuri’s collegiate past unfolding in the dark of a Barcelona hotel room: _there were these parties, and I … I nearly panicked, the first time, I couldn’t believe anyone would want me._ Victor had smiled to himself, then, and pressed his nose to Yuuri’s shoulder, chuckling in the dark about every hapless victim of Yuuri’s unwitting Eros. _But it felt, well, good, I guess, and I started … It …_

 _You can tell me anything, Yuuri,_ Victor had reminded him. _Anything at all._

_I told myself I could pretend to be something else there. It was a different world. A universe where Katsuki Yuuri was confident._

“Vitya,” he prompts again, and _oh_ , Victor wants so desperately to please him, to show Yuuri that the universe in which he once imagined he might reign is in fact, one and the same as the reality Victor occupies. “Can you?”

Except that Yuuri has also taken from him his ability to smile and to lie, and so the answer is not so easy as it seems. “... Let me try,” he says, instead, and for a moment Yuuri’s eyes soften as he rearranges them. This time Victor will not be drooling into the mattress as Yuuri takes him from behind and simultaneously jerks him off so furiously that Victor’s vision goes black and white with dots when he comes.

“Like this,” Yuuri instructs. His cock is mostly hard against his stomach; not for the first time does Victor wish he could touch it. He’d tried, earlier, fumbling down Yuuri’s chest with desperate, inaccurate kisses, only to have found himself easily diverted by a simple rebuke, and clear instructions that his whole body still sings with. _No, Victor. Not like that._ Yuuri’s the one touching himself now, leisurely slicking himself up as Victor watches from some place halfway beyond himself. Then Victor is hovering over him on trembling thighs, and sinking carefully, slowly down the thick length of him, heaving in breath for every fluid inch. “Perfect,” Yuuri cooes at him, cradling Victor’s face in his hands. They rock together slowly, Victor straining to guide Yuuri into the place inside him that douses everything in gasoline and then drops a match. “Arch your back, darling,” Yuuri tells him, and so Victor does, and _oh,_ there it is, and he thinks he could find it again if Yuuri would just untie his hands and let him touch and hold on.

Evidently he’s speaking, muttering all of this out loud, because Yuuri shakes his head. “I think you can come just like this, for me,” he says, his gaze intent, all-consuming. “I don’t think I’ll even have to touch you.” He bucks his hips more savagely this time; Victor moans with it, feels a tell-tale pinprick at the corners of his eyes. “Am I wrong, Vitya?”

“No,” whispers Victor, because Yuuri has never really been wrong about him; Yuuri has picked his way through all of his masks and flayed him and the glint of the ring on his finger says that this is how Victor will spend the rest of his life. It doesn’t stop him from a littany of begging as they move together, over and over; _please_ tumbles off his tongue in four different languages. “Fuck, Yuuri -- please, I’m -- I --”

Yuuri chooses that exact moment to twist one of Victor’s abused nipples between his fingers, and Victor shatters, comes with Yuuri’s name on his lips for the third time that morning, loud enough that he’s sure he’d wake the neighbors if he didn’t own the penthouse. He barely feels Yuuri’s fingers as they pick apart the silken loop that keeps his hands bound together behind his back, shuddering through Yuuri’s increasingly erratic thrusts. Yuuri comes just moments after, but that’s not what paints Victor’s insides; it’s the way he’s suddenly gathered up into Yuuri’s arms, and the fierce _大好きです_ Yuuri presses into his kiss-bruised lips.

Victor floats on that confession, startlingly free of himself, weightless. Most of the time, the persona of Victor Nikiforov is wrapped around him, both a shield and a shroud, and for years no one else bore the weight of either, until Yuuri came along and ripped them both out of his hands. Sometimes Victor does not know who he is, apart from the labyrinth he’s composed around himself; he’s never quite sure what it is that Yuuri finds in the middle, except for his certainty that it exists, something must, and whatever is there is something that Yuuri loves. _Victor._ Someone is kissing his wrists, touching him softly and so delicately and with incredible, heart-rending care. Saying his name. _Victor, come back to me._ He blinks again; Yuuri’s face comes into focus above his, and it’s Yuuri’s hands, gentle now, which he feels tracing arms, ribs, hips. Victor realizes with a start that these are the outlines of his own body. The love of his life is the one making the map. “Vitya. Are you okay? Was that too much?”

“I love you,” Victor mumbles. Yuuri tells him to breathe, so he does; later, Yuuri guides him into their bath, cradles Victor softly as a feather, kisses the freckles on his shoulders. And still Victor murmurs it; still the confession seeps out. “I love you so much.”

\---

Hasetsu is smaller in person than it is in Victor’s memories.

The inn is more crowded this year, which makes hallways Yuuri spent a summer eluding him in seem far narrower, and infinitely less private. Victor has a minimum of four programs to develop, not counting any exhibition skates, and the rink is noticeably busier: interest has picked up, now that Japan’s ace and his Living Legend have returned home for the summer.

Yet inspiration comes slowly. Infuriatingly so. _You’re in love now, Victor, and the whole world knows it,_ he tells himself, taking early morning solo runs to exorcise his exasperation alone at the beach. There will be expectations. Infinite comparisons. An entire season of reporters asking a question something along the lines of _did you give the best programs to your lover, or save them for yourself?_

He doesn’t know the answer. “No matter,” he tells Yuuri, cheerfully, one morning. “That quad flip is still pretty unreliable.” Victor doesn’t even realize he’s wearing his megawatt smile until he’s turned it on, and sometimes, he can’t turn it off. “We’ll work on your jumps!”

Yuuri groans in protest. Maybe they’re both a little tired, after a night babysitting for the Nishigoris, or maybe they’re both feeling the weight of expectation, the burden of glory, chains that exist only because of Victor’s overeager imagination and Yuuri’s ravenous fears. Whatever the case, Victor digs in. _A glutton for punishment,_ he’s heard, that’s the phrase. He had a language tutor, once, paid for by the FFKK as part of a campaign to make him internationally palatable, a sensation in every possible market. He once studied an entire list of these kinds of colloquial expressions.  _In for a penny, in for a pound,_ he thinks, as Yuuri two-foots his quad-triple combination. “Besides,” he hums, “if your mother keeps cooking like she has been, we’ll be back on last year’s diet in no time.”

It does the trick well enough; Yuuri’s eyes narrow into that murderous look he sometimes gets before a competition. Victor has learned that Yuuri’s thousand-yard stare is largely dissociative; contrary to what some of his competitors believe, he’s not actually preparing to kill anyone, as far as Victor knows. Their practice together mutates accordingly, professionally conducted, kept just short of punishing. Later, Victor bicycles ahead of Yuuri back across the bridge, his pace brisk. He hears one of the locals ask Yuuri a question as they pass by; his Japanese isn’t good enough to keep up, but he has enough context to understand regardless. _How’s the new program coming?_

Behind him, Yuuri hesitates on an accented _o-k_ and Victor pointedly picks up speed; the world is expecting a lot more than just _okay._ He hears Yuuri’s regular footfalls smacking the pavement behind him, and the labor of his breath, and centers himself on those sounds. It’s a buffer against the growing noise in his head, the grinding of his own teeth. “Are you going to tell me what the hell has gotten into you?” Yuuri huffs, frustrated. “That old man was trying to be nice!”

“We’re training,” Victor points out. Even he’s not sure why he’s defending himself, precisely. Some part of him knows he doesn’t have the high ground. Habit, perhaps: for years he was Victor Nikiforov, and the whole world let him get away with it.

“Asshole,” mutters Yuuri, in Japanese; Victor only recognizes the word thanks to Minako and Mari, who spent several weeks teaching Yuri Plisetsky how to curse. It’s something he hasn’t called Victor in a very long time, even if Plisetsky uses it religiously. Victor had been at his worst a year ago, training both of them, putting all of his charisma and menace into making Yuuri pay for finding real love at the bottom of a katsudon bowl, and even then, Yuuri had been much too starstruck to call him out on it. He almost never reaches for insults, except sometimes in a fond, disparaging sort of way: _snob,_ he’s said, when Victor steers them into first-class lounges at the airport or insists on visiting bespoke shoe stores. But this is different, because Victor is  _making_ it different.

“Yeah?” Victor’s not even angry, somehow. He’s zero for four on the programs, so far, a let-down in every respect. Yuuri might as well call it like it is. Victor’s being childish. Petty. He presses on. “And what are you going to do about it?”

For a moment, there’s no answer beyond the most unsatisfying silence in the world, and then the sound of Yuuri’s footsteps veer sharply right once they’re over the bridge. For a moment, Victor almost doesn’t follow. Except who is he trying to fool? Deep down they both know that Victor would follow Yuuri anywhere.

He wheels the bike back in silence, ever the silver phantom which haunts Yuuri’s steps. He does not have to wait long for the mystery to unravel: ahead of them is a hotel they’ve used together before, albeit only once. Victor’s first introduction to it had been after Rostelecom, when Yuuri had taken one look at him, in the airport, and then made arrangements from his phone on the train back from Fukuoka. _We’re not going home just yet,_ he’d explained, as verbally obtuse as he’s ever been, and he’d taken Victor into a strange reception area curiously devoid of hotel staff, through a digital check-in, and then upstairs into a bedroom. _We call them love hotels,_ he’d admitted. _People come here sometimes to …_

“You think I need to get laid,” Victor murmurs, as they ride alone in an elevator up to the second floor.

“No,” says Yuuri, and in that way that he has, he glances back up at Victor and proceeds to neatly fillet him. “I think you’re trying to cause trouble.” It’s a polite way of saying something else, the way Victor has come to learn the Japanese so often do: _I think you’re asking to be punished._ “I’m going to take a shower,” he adds, once they’re inside, with no question or invitation in his tone; giving just a cursory glance towards the bed. Suddenly the dynamic between them morphs again. Yuuri has reclaimed, with just one look, the ground Victor’s held over him all day, the right to be in charge. “You can wait here.”

Previously, Victor has only been able to take his frustrations out on himself. He is the best figure skater of all time, a title that didn’t come without a cost, even if only he and perhaps Yakov are privy to the details of the payment. Hours spent at the rink. An endless willingness to push himself further than anyone has ever gone.

 _Wait here,_ says Yuuri, like everything is merely that simple, like Victor even knows the meaning of the word. _Wait._

He doesn’t wait. To a certain extent, he doesn’t know how. Victor strips and fumbles in the drawer for the lubricant he knows will be there, and Yuuri comes out of the shower to find Victor mindlessly preparing himself, already halfway through the motions, the pleasure of it sheerly perfunctory, the means to an end. “Impatient,” Yuuri scolds, but he gives Victor’s shoulder a careless shove nonetheless. He’s beautiful like this, his hair wet and slicked back from the shower, as naked as though he’d only just come out of the hot springs. Every so often a droplet of water gathers on the ends of his hair and trickles down his neck; even in the funk he’s in, Victor follows the path of every little rivulet with his gaze. He doesn’t bother with a real answer; instead he adds a third finger for additional stretch and feeds Yuuri a cool, pointed stare, as if to say _I got ready for you, lover. Now what will you do with me?_

Yuuri turns away from him, rummaging through a nearby cabinet for something Victor can’t see. He returns with a basic O-Ring in his hand, and reaches for the lube Victor’s left for him on the side table. “Safe word,” Yuuri murmurs, pointedly, already re-arranging Victor’s limbs as he climbs up onto the bed. Someone’s going to wear the ring, and evidently it’s not going to be Yuuri.

“Yubileyny,” says Victor. He receives a curt nod in return and an almost clinical fitting of the cock ring, although Yuuri is terrible at feigning disinterest: his fetching blush is back, high on his cheekbones and out to the tips of his ears, and even if it wasn’t, there’s still the matter of his dick, high and thick and proud against his stomach. Victor feels his lips twitch with a smile in spite of himself; at his worst and his most vain, it’s terribly satisfying to know how much he turns Yuuri on. His body hums with the power of it, anticipatory, but the dull pressure of the ring is as good a reminder as any that this power between them -- the chemistry -- runs in both directions.

And tonight, Yuuri has decided Victor’s going to be at his mercy. “Turn over.” It’s half instruction, half manhandling; Yuuri showcases his understated strength as he wrangles Victor up onto his hands and knees. Victor feels the blunt head of Yuuri’s cock against his rim, and the first press forward, slow and slippery. That’s all the warning he gets; Yuuri draws back and then snaps his hips forward, so savage that he punches a curse right out of Victor’s throat. He leans over Victor’s back, already setting a brutal pace. “You can come when I tell you,” Yuuri says, punctuating the statement with a nip to Victor’s shoulder. “After you beg me for it.”

Some nights they make love so slowly that even Victor forgets how it is that they started, who it was who deepened the soft kisses they exchange to send them tumbling into passion. Tonight, Yuuri bites him and then sucks on the crescent indent momentarily left by his teeth, intent on leaving a mark. And then he does it again. Later, Victor will have to crane his head to search for the mottled patch of bruises in the mirror, pressing his fingers into each one until they pale and then turn scarlet again. Some nights are like this, the ones Victor wants to still feel for days.

Passion and pain share similar roots. _To suffer. To endure._ “Is this as -- _ah --_ hard as you can go, Yuuri?” He taunts, the effect of it diminished by the slap of their skin and his own intermingled panting. In response, Yuuri places one palm on the back of Victor’s neck and the other on the base of his spine, directing his shoulders forward and making him arch his back. They know each other’s bodies intimately; just this subtle shift alone changes the way Yuuri’s cock slides past his prostate, forces Victor to half-heartedly swallow down his own treacherous groan.

“You should see yourself,” Yuuri replies, sliding one hand to Victor’s hip, yanking him back until he’s buried to the hilt. Victor gasps and can feel Yuuri’s answering grin, even if he can’t see it. He knows it’s there, just like how he knows Yuuri’s favorite color is blue and his favorite food is katsudon and that he’ll stop halfway through a run to ask a stranger if he can pet their dog. “You take it so well like this,” Yuuri purrs. It’s his possessive voice; the _Victor, the show’s already started_ tone, and Victor digs his hands into the pillows, fights off a shudder. He’d been shy with the bedroom talk, early in their relationship; Victor, on the other hand, has never had any shortage of wildly inappropriate praise.

Now, Victor can’t help but think he may have created a monster. “Do you think anyone else imagines that you just let me have you like this?” Yuuri asks, and because he’s a menace, he reaches down and curls a hand around Victor’s dick, running his thumb over the slit. Victor curses out loud and bucks into his touch, but there’s no relief to be found in it, just the steady, ever-present pressure of the ring around his cock and balls. “I don’t think they have any idea,” Yuuri continues, relentless; Victor claws uselessly into the sheets, desperately trying to either careen into the peak of his pleasure or sharply avoid it, he can’t possibly tell. Yuuri stops moving abruptly, and leans over to press a wet, filthy kiss to the place between Victor’s shoulder-blades. “Well,” he asks, expectant. “Is there something you want?”

 _You can come when I tell you,_ he’d said. _After you beg for it._ And Victor nearly does. He bites down on his own lip, chokes on the word _please_ and swallows it in strangled, answering groan. “What was that?” Yuuri asks. “I can’t hear you, _coach_.”

 _Coach._ The word rattles Victor, digs into his marrow. _Coach._ It’s a stupid thing to get hung up on, especially now, but here Victor is, being stupid, falling apart over a singular word. Yuuri’s told him other things about words. There are rules, warnings. Not once has he ever had to reach for one, and yet here they are. “ Жёлтый ,” he gasps. _Zheltyy. Jaune._ “Y-- yellow.”

Yuuri’s touch changes instantly; he pulls out, guides Victor down to the bed, and then turns him over. Victor’s suddenly too tired to resist, even though the thought crosses his mind because it seems like an easy way to escape scrutiny. “Sorry,” he mumbles. He drapes an arm over his face, pretends that being scrutinized by Yuuri in this way doesn’t make him feel suddenly transparent and fragile.

“Victor,” Yuuri tries. It’s a middle ground, separate from whatever it is they’ve just been doing, but firmer than _Vitya_ or _Vitenka,_ and for once Victor’s grateful for that. He needs hard edges from time to time; if the surface of ice was soft, it would’ve swallowed him up ages ago. He doesn’t baby Victor; doesn’t press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, or apologize. He does not ask if Victor’s okay in the most obvious sense. Instead what he says is this:

“Are you with me?”

It’s a stunningly simple question to which there is only one answer. “Yeah,” Victor whispers, ignoring the lump in his throat. _I am going to marry you,_ he thinks, and hardly for the first time. _Not today. Not tomorrow._ They’re waiting on Grand Prix assignments to set a date, but it doesn’t matter, he’s wearing Yuuri’s ring, still; two halves of a whole, engraved with a secret on the inside that only they know about and carry. _Soon._ It’s a simple revelation, but a powerful one; suddenly the programs don’t matter, none of it does. The world shrinks to a pair of golden bands. To just the two of them. “... Always.”

“Good,” says Yuuri, and only then does he reward Victor with a deep and searching kiss. Afterwards, he shifts, carefully working the O-Ring off of Victor’s still-straining cock.

“Letting me off easy?” Victor asks, fighting off a wry smile. “I thought you said I had to beg for it.”

“I still haven’t said you won’t,” retorts Yuuri. “I’ve just changed my mind about the method.”

“Is it devious?” inquires Victor. He watches as Yuuri moves around the room, tossing the ring into the trash, and picking through a cabinet of other toys.

“Victor,” Yuuri murmurs, and if he wasn’t naked and sweaty and hard he might’ve actually managed to be the picture of innocence. “Can I blindfold you?”

In the end Victor comes exactly the way Yuuri predicted, but not at all how he envisioned: swathed in darkness and fucked slowly and powerfully as he straddles Yuuri's lap while Yuuri unfurls yet another aspect of his true Eros -- dragging ice cubes over Victor’s sensitive dick, and abdomen, and chest, then lapping away the melting water with the heat of his mouth. Blinded, Victor has no idea what to expect next: the shocking chill of the ice, when dragged across his clavicles and down to a sensitive nipple, or the subsequent puff of Yuuri’s breath, the wet warmth of his tongue. _Something you want?_

_Please -- Fuck! -- Yuuri, I’m --_

_Ask me, Victor. Tell me what it is you want._

_Let me come. Please --_

Even in the darkness, he sees stars.

“So,” Yuuri asks, after, navigating them both through a shower that Victor feels like he can hardly stand up for. _“Coach?”_

It’s so strange, Victor realizes. Amidst the not entirely unpleasant haze that lingers in his mind every time they do _this,_ the thing that puts a full stop to every one of his relentless ambitions and his endless self-critique, there is also a stark clarity, like he’s some kind of instrument brought back into tune. He could not have explained it even fifteen minutes before; he did not know the melody. “Coach,” he repeats. “It’s something precious to me,” he says. When Yuuri looks at him with a question still in his eyes, Victor has a ready answer.

The word is too sacred to be used mockingly. “It was the first way you let me love you.”

\---

They return to St. Petersburg with three and a half of the four programs finished; after Victor debuts them both for Yakov, the short is deemed acceptable and the free skate is declared hideously uninspired. “It’s not hideous,” Yuuri protests over dinner, nose scrunched up in secondhand outrage. It’s so cute that Victor has to pass by to kiss it as he sets the table. “You’re still finishing it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Victor chides, flashing a wry smile. Years with Yakov have taught him to be unphased by his coach’s terse remarks; they’ve worked together long enough to know that the current moment is nothing more than a gathering storm over the coast. Victor and Yakov have spent year after year like this, waiting for lightning to strike, manufacturing magic.  “I’d agree with Yakov myself if I could stand giving him the satisfaction,” he adds, sweeping a reassuring hand over Yuuri’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out soon.”

Yuuri ladles out the stroganoff that Victor’s thrown together for dinner. It’s simple, all this, deceptively so: having someone in his home to cook for has made Victor dig through all of his grandmother’s recipes, has domesticated his stark, stylish flat, into something lived-in and comfortable. “Well. What do you think it’s missing, then?”

It’s a good question. “Elegance,” Victor decides. It’s the first of several soft words he chooses to describe the thing that’s waiting to coalesce in his thoughts. “Grace. It needs to be … more delicate.”

Yuuri is so sure of him, so faithful. Victor will never tire of glancing over and being startled by the love in his eyes. “You’ll get there.”

“I know,” says Victor.

\---

In Barcelona, that night, they’d exchanged other questions, other answers, truth after truth until sleep finally came. Yuuri’s first question had been _why did you really cut your hair,_ and the ‘really’ had been the most important part of the distinction. For months, it had been the subject of many of Victor’s interviews. No doubt Yuuri read them then; no doubt he’s learned by now to suss out the dishonest parts. _Time for a change,_ a younger Victor had quipped to at least three different magazines, flashing an impish grin and a fey wink. _I like keeping everyone guessing,_ he’d said.

Both of them lies wrapped up in an Olympic jacket, wearing a smile, dressed up in the truth.

“I was seeing someone, back then,” Victor admitted, skimming his fingers through the short hair at the base of Yuuri’s neck. He closed his eyes, trying to remember how it had felt, to sit in the barber’s chair and wait for the guillotine. He’d gone in expecting a kind of death, and emerged with reclaimed freedom. “It... He was the first, and he … he liked it. The androgyny of it.” _You’re pretty, Victor_ . _Is that what you want, to be a pretty girl?_ “... For a while it was nice, being someone else’s beautiful thing.” He remembered bottles of nail polish from that era. Experimenting with makeup. Walking into a costume designer’s office and insisting he could wear something bondage inspired, reflecting both genders.

“Except,” Yuuri prompted, quiet and understanding.

“Except,” agreed Victor. “He used to pull on it when we fucked.” _Beautiful,_ he said. Always beautiful. Never intelligent or passionate or clever or handsome. “And I didn’t like how it made me feel. I was young and stupid and I thought cutting it off would change the dynamic. But it didn’t matter.”

“Because you left him after you did it,” Yuuri murmured.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I saw it in your skating,” Yuuri replied softly. “It almost made me cry. I couldn’t explain why.”

\---

After one of Yakov’s more brutal practices, Yuuri sends Victor out of the house to take Makkachin for her walk. _It’ll clear your head,_ he explains, and even though Victor’s not sure his head needs clearing, he goes, watching Makkachin nose along the early piles of falling leaves as they wander alongside the Neva. He returns home to the sound of water running in the master bathroom, the door left open in an unspoken invitation. Yuuri is there, conspicuously wet, towel wrapped around his waist, and there’s a wardrobe bag hanging on their towel rack. “You look like you’ve already had a bath,” Victor murmurs, trying and failing to hide his smile; Yuuri’s up to something, and Victor’s always game to play along.

“I took a shower,” Yuuri replies, and tilts his head towards the bathtub, already halfway full and nearly steaming. He moves towards Victor, picking at the bottom edge of his sweater, helping him undress. “This is for you,” he adds, with a shy smile that Victor can’t help but kiss the corner of. “You trust me, right?”

If it was anyone but Yuuri asking the question, Victor would be surprised by it. He trusts Yuuri implicitly, and Yuuri knows it, but it’s not always enough to prevent him from asking like this. _You trust me, right?_ is little different from _you still love me, don’t you?_ Both are spoken with the same voice he uses while insisting he’s merely a mediocre skater, the gremlin Victor is learning to live with. “Of course,” he says, simply. When he marries Yuuri, he will be marrying all of him, even his anxiety.

Especially that.

To Victor’s delight, Yuuri joins him in the bath. _Let me take care of you,_ Yuuri insists. He means it in the purest sense of the word, washing Victor’s hair with Victor’s favorite, subtly floral shampoo before picking through a basket of fancy soaps they picked up together in Barcelona for a hand-cut bar smelling of almonds and cherries. He’s meticulous as he scrubs Victor’s shoulders and down his back, then makes Victor turn around in the tub to rub at the sore tendons in his ankles. “Feels good,” Victor hums. It’s an understatement: it feels _heavenly._ He glances back towards the garment bag still hanging up on the wall. “What’s the occasion?”

“I don’t need a reason,” Yuuri replies. He drags the rag up Victor’s thigh, smile half-cocked with the hint of a promise. _Oh,_ thinks Victor, who isn’t given time to contemplate the quiet heat in Yuuri’s gaze because Yuuri pops the drain and gets out of the bath, where he insists on helping Victor dry off and and wraps him up in a fluffy bathrobe. The mystery of the garment bag follows them when Yuuri picks it up and leads Victor back out, moving down the hall to a guest room that only ever sees use when Yuri Plisetsky is feeling a very particular mix of rebellious and homesick. Nearly a dozen different nail polishes are waiting on the nightstand; Yuuri makes Victor pick through them for two colors.

“I haven’t painted my nails in years,” Victor admits.

“I know,” says Yuuri. The pampering doesn’t stop there, not even after his toes shine a shimmery plum and Yuuri’s painted his fingernails a sweet, blush-colored pink; Yuuri does his hair, the way Victor used to, at competitions, and then he opens the nightstand drawer to reveal that he’s repatriated most of Victor’s makeup. At first, Victor can’t help but laugh, imagining Yuuri scrambling around the house while Victor took Makkachin out, but the dynamic shifts when Yuuri sweeps powder over his eyes.

 _Pretty,_ he realizes. _He’s making me pretty._

“Vitya?”

Victor lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and looks up at Yuuri, who’s poised and ready with eyeliner. _You trust me, right?_ “... Yeah,” he says. Simply looking at Yuuri steadies him, but he reaches for Yuuri’s hip to anchor himself even further.

Yuuri finishes his makeup with a sweep of lipstick over Victor’s mouth and then tilts his head towards the garment bag. “Get dressed,” he says. “I’ll be in our room when you’re ready.”

 _Our room._ Just two simple words, but Victor’s heart swells with them. _Ours._

Victor has no idea what he was expecting, but the lingerie is a surprise. The set is a beautiful, deep burgundy, as rich as wine, trimmed in a pale gold lace. The silk is luxurious and soft between his fingers -- _decadent_ , he thinks, like everything else Yuuri’s done this evening. He dresses with the care the gift deserves, stockings, briefs, garter belt, and then ties up the satin robe and instinctively looks for a mirror.

The guest room doesn’t have one.

 _Our room,_ Victor reminds himself, and slinks down the hallway to where Yuuri waits, nervously twisting his hands together as he sits on their bed. Almost immediately, Yuuri stands up to greet him -- the entire ordeal has made him jumpy in a way Victor hasn’t seen since the day Yuuri decided he’d try a quadruple flip in competition just because he thought Victor might like it. He's taking some risk here, Victor thinks; he's not any more sure the gesture will land than he was when he first tried the flip, and yet he's motivated by the same startling thing, that feeling they call love. “Victor,” he breathes. “You look …”

But rather than finish the sentence he draws Victor to him, where they can stand together in front of the floor-length mirror in the corner. Yuuri twines his arms around Victor’s waist, propping his chin on Victor’s shoulder, and Victor looks at the man in the mirror with some surprise.

Objectively, Victor knows he’s handsome. He’s spent years playing up his looks, flashing winks at his fans or sending sultry stares into the camera for photoshoots. And he’s vain, too: the closet full of designer clothes and bespoke shoes speaks for itself, as do the orderly row of skincare products left on his side of the bathroom counter. The man looking back at him is something else entirely, though, otherworldly in a way Victor’s only sometimes allowed himself to be when he skates -- when it suits a role he’s decided to play for a watching audience. “Beautiful,” Victor suggests, with a smile that contradicts itself, wry and touched at the same time.

“Magnificent,” Yuuri corrects. He’s blushing from ear to ear as he undoes the silk tie around Victor’s waist and parts the robe, skimming one hand down Victor’s bare chest to the garter belt. “... You look magnificent.”

Victor leans back into him and turns his head so that he can nose into Yuuri’s cheek, keeping one eye on the profile of the creature reflected back at him. He momentarily has a different vision entirely; this one of Yuuri in black and lace, and the longing he’s hit with is startling in its depth and clarity. “... Would you do this for me, sometime?” He asks, voice barely more than a whisper as Yuuri’s fingers drift down his iliac furrow, scraping through the neatly trimmed hair barely visible above the gold lace at the edge of his briefs.

“Yes,” Yuuri replies, without hesitation, outlining Victor’s stirring cock with his palm. Victor exhales: once again the scales between them swing into equilibrium. 

“... Well,” he murmurs, swaying into Yuuri’s touch, his eyes still on the mirror. “You got me all dressed up, зайчик. Now what?”

“What do you want?” Yuuri asks.

Victor huffs out a laugh. “I want to get this lipstick all over you,” he says, grinning when Yuuri's fingers tellingly twitch.  _It’s my turn to take care of you._ This is how he gets Yuuri to the edge of their bed, how he leaves a rosy outline of his lips just above his heart, how he trails increasingly sloppy, wet kisses down the plane of Yuuri’s stomach and playfully nips at the insides of Yuuri’s powerful thighs just to feel the muscles quiver under his hands. How he kitten-licks at Yuuri’s dick until he’s squirming and impatient, how he finally takes him into his mouth, and hollows out his cheeks, and listens intently for every one of Yuuri’s tells: Yuuri is not loud in bed, the way Victor can be, sometimes; pleasure comes to him in sharp inhales and breathy gasps. To learn him takes attention and care. Yuuri’s fingers skim across Victor’s cheekbones, over the ridges of his ears, and into his hair, adoration writ plain on his face, and Victor arrives at a conclusion he hasn’t known he was looking for: it is beyond Yuuri to cause him harm.

Fleetingly, perhaps; accidentally or from the pit of his own anxieties and fears, the way he had in Barcelona. But never intentionally; never lasting. And here, now, Yuuri is trying to give something back to him.

Something lost.

He pulls off, recapturing Yuuri’s dick with his hand in slow, steady strokes, and presses a lingering, apologetic kiss to the tip of it until Yuuri bites back a moan as Victor’s tongue runs over the slit. Victor waits until Yuuri brushes his bangs back and then looks up. The moment between them stretches; Victor snaps it. “You can pull it,” he says, with a brief smirk, as Yuuri’s expression goes slack with surprise. _Just you. Only you._ “I don’t mind. Go on,” he teases. “Be a little rough.”

It’s the only warning he gives before he dips his head back down, and takes Yuuri into the back of his throat. Yuuri’s fingers curl in his hair, experimental. When Victor hums in approval, he shifts his hips, and all it takes is another heated glance upwards, and the encouragement of Victor’s hands, for the real work to be underway. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, Yuuri shallowly fucks Victor’s mouth while Victor hums and sucks and licks until drool runs down his chin. The ache in his jaw and the sharp pull of Yuuri’s hands in his hair are as good a distraction as any from the way his own cock is straining in the confines of satin and lace, but for the moment Victor’s own body is an afterthought; all he wants is for Yuuri to feel good. Victor fondles his balls, then sucks and swallows around Yuuri's dick as it slides into his throat.

“I’m close,” Yuuri warns him, his breathing erratic, and Victor feels the muscles in his legs stutter as he tugs Victor forward one last time. Victor hums and swallows, and that’s all it takes: Yuuri spills down his throat with a ragged moan that Victor relishes, and then immediately slouches back on the bed on his elbows, temporarily spent. When Victor climbs onto the bed to meet him there, Yuuri cradles his face, expression sweet and incredulous. “... What did I ever do to deserve you?” He wonders, wiping the mess on Victor’s chin away with the pad of his thumb.

“You were yourself,” Victor answers, swallowing again to find his voice. “And that was more than enough.”

Yuuri kisses him for it, deep and sure and slow, and tugs Victor into his embrace; Victor's aching cock brushes against his hip, and he mindlessly ruts into it, finally seeking his own relief. It makes Yuuri break their kiss. “Wait,” he says, and scoots back, fumbling in the nightstand for a bottle of lube, which he presses into Victor’s hand.

“Are you sure?” Lately, the intensity of their training schedules has led to a lot of idle, non-penetrative sex; three days ago, Yuuri woke Victor up with a blowjob, and there’ve been quick handsies in the shower, or intercrural before bed. Victor’s not complaining: he could spend the rest of his life fucking Yuuri’s strong, able thighs, and still die a very happy man.

Yuuri’s smile is subtle, dangerous. “Go on,” he echoes. “Be a little rough.” But when Victor finally moves to strip out of the silk robe he’s in, Yuuri grabs his hand. “Keep that on,” he says, still bossy, and still blushing about it; another of those little contradictions Victor likes so much. “I like it." 

Victor opens him carefully, more slowly than Yuuri wants, determined to take his time, and then he finally strips out of the lacy briefs while Yuuri sits back on his elbows to watch. "... Tell me what you were picturing, when you asked me if I'd do this, earlier," Yuuri murmurs against Victor's shoulder as Victor hooks one of his legs around his waist and then eases into him. It amazes Victor, the way they move together, how easy every push and pull between their bodies has always been, long before their minds or hearts even understood what was at stake. "Tell me what it'll be like."

So Victor does: he closes his eyes and imagines Yuuri in some scandalously decadent nightgown, floor-length with a thigh-high slit. Red, red lipstick. High heels to show off Yuuri's fetching ankles. "I'll buy you Louboutins," he insists, as his thrusts pick up speed and urgency, apace with the fantasy. The nightgown will have a low back, Victor decides, perfect for trailing kisses over every bump in Yuuri's spine, and he'll hike it up around Yuuri's waist when they fuck, will bend Yuuri over god-knows-what piece of furniture, and then they'll have to clean it up after and will never be able to look at it again with a straight face when guests are over. "The dining table," he decides, when Yuuri eggs him on for details. The windows there offer one of the apartment's better views, which he knows gives Yuuri a thrill that he'll never admit to: there's a tiny, non-zero chance of being _seen,_ somehow, as though someone could catch just the right impossible angle and learn yet again just who it was whole stole Victor Nikiforov from the world. "You'll look so good," he adds, almost incoherent with praise, which Yuuri goes wild for, blush spreading across his chest as he slides his hands under silk and rakes his fingers down Victor's back.  _Harder,_ he insists, and so Victor hooks his elbows under Yuuri's knees, folds them up together, goes as deeply and quickly as he can.

"So good," Yuuri moans, his eyes ablaze. "Make me feel it, _Vitenka_."

They’re a mess when they finish; Victor first, before he reaches for Yuuri and strokes him through his second orgasm while Victor's slowly going soft inside him.

“... I think I need another bath,” Victor admits. Tomorrow he will take note of the lingerie tossed into their hamper, and give an extra tip to the woman who handles their laundry service, as incentive for discretion. Today he is lazy and content; in the arms of the man he loves, who ever challenges him to uncover himself.

Yuuri grunts. “You’re going to have to settle for a shower,” he says, and Victor does.

They curl together like one body for sleep; Victor closes his eyes to Yuuri’s deepening, steady breaths. “... Hey, Yuuri?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you like it if I grew my hair back out?”

Yuuri hums in the dark and kisses the damp whorl at the top of Victor’s head. “I will like you when you are old and bald and wrinkly,” he says, stubbornly, and ignores Victor’s scandalized gasp. He evades every subsequent attempt Victor makes to try to get him to tell him what to be, just as he always has. “Be Victor,” he reminds Victor sleepily, ever and always an echo of their conversation on the beach in Hasetsu. “Just Victor.” He tilts his head down for one more goodnight kiss, open-mouthed and luxurious and rich. "That was more than enough."

Victor's last thought, before he sinks into sleep, is that he suddenly knows exactly what the free skate's been missing.

He hums it to himself, tracing Yuuri's hipbones, thinking about how love is a hymn to both beauty and brokenness: _and every breath we drew was Hallelujah.  
_


End file.
